Discovering Grief and Loss with Karina Rodriguez

The speaker shares a personal story about her mother being diagnosed with stage four cancer. She discusses the effects of grief on the mind, body, and soul, referencing the Kubler-Ross model of the five stages of grief. The speaker then interviews someone named Hansel about his experiences with loss, including the death of his grandmother and the rehoming of his dog. The importance of acknowledging and understanding different emotions during the grieving process, particularly in teenagers, is emphasized. The speaker recommends a book called "The Grieving Brain" and concludes with a quote about love and the ongoing presence of loved ones in our lives. Grieving is described as a lifelong process, and various resources for support are mentioned. It's November 2021. My mom keeps on complaining about her stomach pain. The doctors say it's just a stomach flu or a virus and just keep sending her home with antibiotics. Christmas of 2021 comes and my mom is literally on the couch in pain throughout the dinnertime. The opening of presents, she's still covered up in her blanket with a beanie over her head. Okay, now I'm thinking this is too much, she needs to go to the hospital. As our conversations follow through the month of January of 2022, she's still not doing very good. We go to the hospital to get an MRI and when I tell you that that day was the worst day of my life, it was. The doctor comes in with a serious blank face and in a calm voice asks how I'm related and if my mom speaks English. She doesn't, so I'll be translating. I always translated for my mom since I was a child. I would translate important paperwork, my grades, my school, my detentions, just anything in general, contracts, conversations she would have with other people in person. I would also translate for my boyfriends if they didn't speak Spanish, you name it, but this time it was different. I had a mix of emotions going through me like a thousand miles per hour I would tell you. I'm so sorry to tell you this, but your mom has stage four cancer. At this point, I think to myself immediately as a doctor is still talking to me, what is stage four? Is it not as bad? Is it like diabetes type one that's worse than type two? The doctor adds she has pancreatic cancer that has now moved to her liver which makes it stage four and it's not curable, it's just treatable. I tell my mom the horrible news in Spanish and my mom's face goes blank. My mom asks the worst question, how long do I have left? I hate being here in this moment. My name is Karina Rodriguez and I'll be speaking about loss and grief. I have lost a few people in my life including one of the most important people in my life, my mother. I have experienced the loss of pets, loss of relationships, loss of ideas and more. Although loss is still loss, the effects we can feel all vary within different people at different times. In this particular podcast, I will go over the effects of grief has on the mind, body and soul. I'll be covering some psychological effects, what goes on in the brain and how we can cope with these losses going through it and hopefully not lose hope and have better days, months and years. According to the Huntington's Disease Society of America, the Kubler-Ross model was introduced by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book titled On Deaths and Dying. The Kubler-Ross model commonly known as the five stages of grief consists of going through feelings of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Quoted, Kubler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness later to any form of catastrophic personal loss. This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one, divorce, drug addiction, the onset of a disease or chronic illness, an infertility diagnosis as well as many tragedies and disasters. Kubler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above nor all. Steps experienced by the patients, though she stated as a person, will always experience at least two. Often people experience several stages in a roller coaster effect switching between two or more stages returning to one or more several times before working through it. And as later studies have shown more recently that these stages are not linear. Grief affects everybody differently and today I will be interviewing Hansel Rodriguez. He is your regular team that's interested in listening and creating music and playing basketball. Hansel, how are you doing today? I'm doing pretty good. You? I'm doing awesome. So today I'm going to ask you a few questions about how you have felt lost in your life. Can you recall any times that you've felt lost? I felt lost like with my dad. How so? I felt like with my dad he wasn't there and when he wasn't there I would just, I would be sad, I would be confused a lot. Do you have those feelings now? Not as often. Out of anger, denial, depression or sadness and acceptance, what feelings do you have now? Anger. Anger? What are you angry about? That he wasn't there. Are you angry at him? Are you angry at yourself? I'm angry at him. And earlier before we started recording you said you were accepting. Are you accepting of it? Have you forgiven him? Yes. Okay. How other ways have you felt lost? With my grandmother. What happened to her? She ended up dying from cancer. And what feelings did you feel? Well, when she had cancer, during her chemo and stuff, I was very extremely sad, and when she died at that moment, I felt like a bunch of sadness just came out at that moment, and then after that I was just scared. What were you scared about? Scared of the fact that she was dead. Did you feel any sense of bargaining with your grandma, like if she would have done things sooner, if she would have done chemo sooner? Yes. Like if she would have not had her wedding, and just done what she needed to do, then she probably would have been able to live longer. And also, what if I would have been there longer, and actually have been there and talked to her in Spanish, she probably would have understood me, and I probably would have indulged her presence, in her presence. Have you felt any loss of pets? Yes, with my one dog, Daisy. And what feelings did you feel at that time, or do you feel now? Anger and sadness. What made you feel angry during the loss of your dog? Mostly mad at my mom, that we re-homed her. So would you say that you feel any type of emotions now from the loss of your grandmother, from not having your dad? Do you feel any emotions now? With my grandma, I don't feel as sad, I just kind of accepted the fact that she is dead. And with my dad, I forgave him, so I don't really feel much of a loss in that department anymore. And with my dog, I mean, it was my dog, and I can't really be that sad about it for that long. And, you know, that's why we have to move on sometimes. Yeah, that's actually very good that you say that. What's important to acknowledge is that all of these different emotions are totally normal. Teenagers grieve differently. According to Dr. Lori Rappaport, teens grieve differently than adults. They move in and out of strong emotions and often grieve for a longer period of time. Their behavior may range from cold and withdrawn to clingy, to appear as though they're doing fine. They're often not able to express in words how they're feeling or what they need. I mean, let's face it, adults, we have a hard time expressing how we feel between having so many responsibilities and busy schedules. Sometimes life gets ahead of us. It's also very important to have self-care and to be aware of all these things that can happen through the loss and grief. A very great book I recommend is The Grieving Brain by Mary Frances O'Connor. She's a neuroscientist and psychologist who directs the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress considered as GLASS Lab at the University of Arizona, investigating the effects of grief on the brain and the body. This is a very great book that talks about the science behind of how we feel and how the brain is affected by a loss, and I'll leave you with this quote here about love. After a loved one dies, they're clearly no longer with us in the physical world with each day proves to us. On the other hand, they're not gone because they are with us in our brain and in our mind. The physical makeup of our brain, the structure of our neurons, has been changed by them. In this sense, you could say that a piece of them physically lives on. That piece is the neural connections protected within our skull, and those neural connections survive in physical form even after a loved one's death. So they are not entirely out there and they're not entirely in here. You're not one, not two. That is because the love between two people, that unmistakable but usually indescribable property occurs between two people. This experience reaches beyond the love for the flesh and the bones of the person we once knew in this earthly plane. Now loving is an attribute of us, regardless of who we share it with, regardless of what is given to us in return. This is a transcendent experience and felt sense of being loving without needing anything in return. In the very best moments together, we learn to love and to be loved. Because of a bonded experience, that loved one and that loving are a part of us now, to call up and act on as we see fit in the present and the future. And I just got to say that grieving is a process of a lifetime. Some people have complex grief. There's many groups out there advocating to be aware about grief and the complexities of it. There's also group shares, there's therapy, there's self-help books, there's YouTube videos now. So it's important to take care of oneself and know that there is hope, that there's also acceptance. And how the saying goes, grief is just love with no place to go. Thank you for listening to my podcast. Until next time.